Monday, October 23, 2017

Inspired Beer - Orval

Orval is a beer that's a big inspiration for me and a lot of others I'm sure. It's a pillar in what used to be a very "weird" group of beers. Go back to somewhere like 2010 and there was limited information readily accessible about brettanomyces. You had to dig into forums and sometimes venture into the dark places of the internet. Go back a little further and I bet there weren't many people who had ever heard the term. I'm sure folks in the wine industry and long time sour beer producers sure knew what it was but for the regular every day craft beer fan and homebrewer, it wasn't commonplace.

But... We had Orval. Orval started showing up here in Mississippi right after the laws changed in 2012 to allow for beer over 6.2% ABV to be sold in the state. My craft beer obsession began around 2009 or so and I had Orval at some point before it showed up in the state. To this day, I always have a few bottles of this wonderfully weird beer on hand.

So why is this an inspiration? What's so great about this beer? Besides being delicious, it is many times a person's first foray into beer with brettanomyces. It also just so happens to combine two of my favorite things in the beer world... Belgian/Trappist beer and brett (brettanomyces) beer. But more than that, it's a brett beer that has been produced since 1931. I'm not positive the same process has been used but I would assume that something similar to what it produced to day has been made for a while. In a beer world filled with sours and brett beers now, that's pretty cool. (I'm sure there are other examples that have been made for a while too but I am not aware of them other than the sour beers of Belgium and maybe English stock ales but even those weren't meant to have brett in them.)

OK all that said, what does it taste like? Why do people love this beer? Well that's another interesting aspect of this one. Since it has brett and is dry hopped it changes a good bit over time. It evolves into different beers all together. Fresh it is quite bitter, has awesome floral hoppy notes with a bit of spice from the yeast and just a hint of brett character in the form of what I would describe fresh wood and citrus fruit. After about 6 months, the dry hop tends to fade and you'll get more of the Belgian yeast character that has a slight bit of acidity to it and some ripe fruits. The brett character really starts to kick up about a year in and you'll have something completely different than the beer was fresh.

So that brings us to this post. "Inspired Beer" is something I've been wanting to do for a while now. Rather than actually try to clone a beer, I'd rather take inspiration from it and make something my own with a similar process. Orval is just the first beer I wanted to write about. It's a dry hopped, brett finished, Trappist beer. So different from what the other Trappist breweries produce. Using their website, reading different books and looking over the internet, below is the recipe I've come up with using inspiration from the original.

*Side Note: There used to be a beer brewed by Green Flash called Rayon Vert that was a take on Orval. I liked that beer a lot too. It has since been discontinued by them and I drank my last bottle of that sometime in the last year or two. It was still awesome.

If you've ever been interested, you can find out a lot of how Orval is made straight from the source here.

Mash Schedule:I found this Orval step mash here.142F for 15 minHeat to 154F and hold for 25 minHeat to 162F and hold for 30 minHeat to 170F and hold for 10 min for mashoutSparge with 170F water

Fermentaiton Schedule:Ferment at room temperature (70-74F) until FG is achieved.

Ideally you'd probably want to use a Belgian pale ale malt but I have
Maris Otter on hand so I used that. Some classic flavoring hops and
I'll be using Hallertau Blanc for dry hopping. I'm interested to see
how this plays with the Belgian yeast and brettanomyces. I really like
this hop in Saison so we'll see how it does here.

Didn't break out the camera on this brew day so you get cell phone pics. My bad :(

This was a rather long brew day. The mash schedule was pretty step intensive but it really paid off in efficiency. My target pre boil gravity was 7.6 brix (1.030 SG) and I actually hit 8.6 brix (1.035 SG). After the 90 minute boil and adding in my sugar I ended up with 14.2 brix. I didn't use all of the Golden Candi Syrup as I was wanting to stay under 14.5 brix (1.059 SG).

Was over my target pre boil gravity and post boil. I didn't adjust with
water but I'll fix my efficiency in BeerSmith.

First runnings were a beautiful amber color.

Two different Belgian Candi Syrups in this one.

After the boil I cooled the wort down to 65F with my plate chiller and pitched the Smack Pack. It wasn't extremely fresh but it did swell completely after about 4 hours.

Hashtag swole

When it reaches a stable final gravity, I'll dry hop and package this up. I'm really interested how the brett and dry hops work in this one. Be on the look out for more "Inspired Beer" posts. I've got a few ideas lined up. Let me know what beers have inspired you along the way!

Updates:

10-22-17: Morning after we already had a nice krausen forming.

6-11-18: Dry hopped with 2oz Aramis. I really liked the aroma on these and thought they would pair well. Will package soon.

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An Interview with Yvan de Baets of Brasserie De La Senne

Excerpt from the Interview of Yvan de Baets by The Beer Temple YouTube Channel

“People think you have to use those very yeasts (farmhouse or saison) for making Saison or farmhouse ales, but that’s not true. Imagine you are a farmer in the 19th century and of course you will use your yeast because it is always better. And when you get an infection which goes really too far, you take the yeast of the neighbor which is a totally different yeast, etc. Then you have dozens and dozens of Saison yeasts in the past. Depending on the way you want to make your Saison, I consider you could make Saison with easily a hundred different yeasts. That’s not a problem.”

Savoring the Saison Panel from GABF

A description of Saison by Belgian brewer Yvan de Baets of Brasserie de la Senne

“A saison must therefore be low in alcohol (in the modern — and Belgian — sense of the word in any case), around 4.5 to 6.5%. It must be highly attenuated (90 to 95% on average, if not more, as apparent attenuation) and dry. It must also be either sour or very bitter (with a bitterness obtained by the use of a massive amount of hops low in alpha acid). It shouldn’t in any case be smooth. If spices are used, it must be with the utmost moderation. A saison is not by any means a spice soup. Ideally, it should be fermented, at least partially, by wild yeasts as well as by cultured varieties. An authentic saison has a small 'wild' side, rustic, indefinable, far from the clean aspect of certain engineered beers of today. In one word, it must have extraordinary character.”